Saturday, February 7, 2015

In July 2013,
I went
to Telegraph Office in Anna Salai to give a telegram to my son – to be
preserved for posterity…….. the telegram was at somepoint the backbone and most
trusted official communication, and
after 163 years, it halted painfully.
On Monday, 15th July
2013, the state-run telecommunications
sent the final telegram, closing
down a service that fast became a relic in an age of email, reliable landlines
and ubiquitous cellphones. The first
telegram in India was transmitted between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour on
November 5, 1850.

The
habit of writing letters is almost dead ~ ask any modern day youngster whether
they have ever used a Postcard, Inland letter or postal cover ? For a couple of
decades e-mail ruled the roost, but in shrinking times, with SMS language
becoming popular, came other social media including Facebook and Whatsapp.

WhatsApp Messenger
is a cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages
without having to pay for SMS. WhatsApp
Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia
and many other smart phones - yes, those
phones can all message each other! Because WhatsApp Messenger uses the same
internet data plan that is used for
email and web browsing, there is no cost to message and stay in touch with your
friends. In addition to basic messaging WhatsApp users can create groups, send
each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages.

WhatsApp Inc. was
founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo. It is a paid service, though available for
free for a limited time in most mobiles ~ and often you see messages
circulating that if you forward the message to a group of X+, WA will change
colour and become free for you ! – there are millions of active users who live
and sleep on WA. By some accounts, India is the largest single country in terms
of number of users.

WA is
not alone, there are more like FB, Snapchart, WeChat, LINE, Telegram … Sometime
back when WhatsApp went down for four hours, nearly 5 million reportedly signed up for Telegram. The app skyrocketed to
the top of the App Store charts, and became the top free app in 46 countries from Germany
to Ecuador. In the US and several other countries, the app is claimed to be no. 1 in the social networking category, ahead
of Facebook, WhatsApp, Kik, and others. There is no logical explanation as to
why users of WA turned to Telegram and not to other similar services !

Telegram Messenger
is a cross-platform instant messaging system whose clients are open source and
servers are proprietary software. Telegram users can exchange encrypted and
self-destructing messages, photos, videos and documents (all file-types
supported). Telegram is officially available for Android and iOS (including
tablets and devices without Wi-Fi) and for Windows Phone as a beta.

Telegram was
launched in 2013 by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the founders of VK,
Russia's largest social network. Telegram Messenger LLP is an independent
nonprofit company based in Berlin, Germany, which is not connected to VK. In Mar 2014, the first contest ended with no winners and
Telegram published the keys necessary to decrypt traffic. Telegram software
allows the sending of voice notes, photos, videos, and files of all types. It
also has groups for up to 200 members. The application features two types of
chats. Ordinary chats use client-server encryption and can be accessed from
multiple devices. Secret Chats use end-to-end encryption and can only be
accessed from the two participating devices.

Old
order changeth, yielding place to new ! – and technology is often confounds !!